


Three Souls in the City of Dreams

by Vulkan192



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Anthology, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Drama, Fluff, Found Family, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recreational Drug Use, Smut, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29607870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulkan192/pseuds/Vulkan192
Summary: A Street Kid, a Nomad, a Corpo, all of them swept up in the bustling metropolis that is Night City. An anthology series seeing how three different Vs react to or approach different matters and settings, from love to the life of a solo to the fact they have the consciousness of a fifty year-old rockerboy rattling around in their brain.
Relationships: Judy Alvarez/V, Kerry Eurodyne/V, Panam Palmer/V
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	1. First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for clicking onto Three Souls! Just as a heads up, this is an anthology series so each chapter probably won't connect directly to the last and some chapters might nip back in time to before other ones if the idea for a chapter/section comes to me. 
> 
> And to anyone worried about Fixing a Broken World, I haven't abandoned it and I'm still working on it. It's just that these chapters are relatively easier to work on and I can get them out of my head easier.
> 
> With that out of the way, read on and enjoy! Comments are of course greatly appreciated.

**_The Street Kid_ **

_ “Lookin’ for Evelyn Parker, you seen her?” _

The words made Judy’s eyes snap down the bar, past all the drunk and half-drunk gonks taking a break between either dancing or flogging the log in the BD cubes, to the one who’d asked that question of Mateo. Her first thought was simply one word.

_ Purple. _

Purple side-swept hair, purple shades pulled down from what - far as she could tell in the neon-soaked light - were purple eyes, purple lipstick, purple edgerunner jacket. The only thing  _ not  _ purple about the chick was tanned skin, the turquoise cropped muscle top, the golden ear studs and bar, and the jeans she had tucked into a pair of exojacks. Though the exojacks were, yup,  _ purple.  _

Stopping focussing on what she looked like, which admittedly wasn’t bad, Judy gave her the same once over she did everyone. Merc, had to be. Wasn’t the jacket that told her that, any gonk could buy, borrow, or steal one of those. Wasn’t the iron poking out from inside it either. Place like Night City, it was a surprise babies didn’t have guns hidden inside their strollers or stuffed into their diapers. It was the way she held herself, the way that - even leant against a bar - every inch of her was tensed and ready to spring into action. The way her eyes, though mostly focussed on Mateo, flickered minutely this way and that, keeping an eye on her surroundings. Yup, definitely a merc. 

And if she was after Evey, then that meant one of two things. Either something had already gone ultra wrong with whatever it was Evelyn was planning and a hit was out on her. And if she wasn’t, then-

“It’s alright, Mateo,” Evelyn’s voice called in her crazy mixture of airy and authoritative. “She’s with me.” 

Turning to look at Evey, she caught the look she’d been expecting, but also dreading. The look that told her to leave them alone. The look that she needed to talk with this merc because she was planning something big. Something that was gonna get her killed if she wasn’t careful enough. A look that she had no choice but to go along with, because causing a scene about staying wouldn’t make Evey look good and wouldn’t work anyway. 

With a sigh, Judy pushed herself off the bar and made for her den. But before she walked out of the club’s main room and into the access corridor she looked back to where Evelyn was talking with the merc. They both had the same look on their faces. Confident, assured, calculating. A pair who look like they could both take on the world. And that was why she could feel something coiling in her stomach, something that wasn’t just the burrito she’d had for lunch.

Because the world? The world  _ always  _ won. 

* * *

**_The Nomad_ **

The doors to The Afterlife opening made Panam look up from the beer she had been nursing for half an hour. Just where was that gonk-brained idiot, Nash? He was late. He was  _ always  _ late. It did not matter where the meet was, when it was, or who set it, he would show up late with not a care in the world. She hated that about him, but it was not like she had a choice. Rogue had set it up and what the Queen Bitch of the Afterlife wanted, she got. And there was not anything a nomad on her own could say about it other than curse his lateness into her beer. 

Nash didn’t walk through the door this time, just like all the times before. But she did not look down and swear at her beer like she had the last dozen times. Because one of the two men that had walked in had caught her eye. Not because she was some gonk-brained perv who liked to fantasise about random people in bars, but because unless she was somehow  _ very _ mistaken, he was like her. He was a nomad. 

He was tall and built well, though in both specs he was dwarfed by the grinning bear of a man walking next to him, but that wasn’t what told her that he was a nomad. Nor was it his hair, as dark at the roots as his long and jutting beard but running to dyed gold and swept back in a traditional mohawk. It was in the set of his shoulders, the controlled confidence in his gait. It was plain to see in his skin, slightly windscored and tanned beyond a natural olive to a deep bronze. And his eyes were eyes that had seen a thousand sunsets in a thousand places, rather than just grown up scorched by neon lights every night. 

It was in the way his hands never strayed too close to either the revolver or the machete he had strapped to each hip but never too far either, unlike city boys who always had them close to hand or corpos who seemingly forgot they were there. It was the way his clothes - a synthleather vest, white muscle shirt, cargo pants tucked into tall combat boots - were chosen to be hardwearing and useful rather than simply slapped on or deliberately picked to shout at those around him. And she could swear blind she’d seen the lotus flowers that were tattooed onto each of his shoulders and upper arms, before flowing onto an abstract design across the top of his chest, at a clan meet somewhere. Same style at least.

Yes, definitely a nomad. 

She watched him as strode up to the bar alongside his friend, smiling a smile that crinkled his face and the still-stapled cut that sliced down across his cheek from just below his right eye as the bigger man cracked some sort of joke. Watched him as they ordered, toasted, and drank. Watched him as they looked around the Afterlife like children at a theme park before being led away by an even bigger huscleman. There was something about him that drew the eye and it was only after she was looking back into her beer and cursing Nash again that she realised what it was. 

He was a nomad, no doubt of that. But there had not been a single clan marker on him, whether on his clothes or inked into his skin. That meant he was like her, an outcast, a nomad without a clan.

Lifting her bottle minutely, she breathed a silent toast to his luck before draining the thing. He would need it.

Night City was not kind to people like them.

* * *

**_The Corpo_ **

Claire’d seen a lot of new bloods walk into the Afterlife. She’d seen a lot of killers walk in too. Not just people who killed, you couldn’t get into the Afterlife without a body count, but people who saw killing like an artist sees their art. She’d seen every kind of merc you could imagine. And at first look, the two new bloods that sat down in front of her were nothing out of the ordinary. The chulo was the typical sort: big, bluff, eager to make his name known by anyone within hearing distance. But at least he was the kind of decent sort that made shifts less of a drag. 

The other one though? He was different, which made him interesting. He was smaller than the bull next to him in both height and size, but that didn’t seem to make a difference to him. He definitely didn’t seem the  _ lesser  _ of the two by any means. Far from it. Wearing a rockerjack as black as his long hair and short beard, with a broad yellow collar and cuffs, he looked around the place as if he owned it or would do soon. Not in the snotty, arrogant way some punks with more hairspray than sense did but with the cool, collected examination of a would-be buyer, like he was buying an apartment downtown. In a place with a pecking order like the Afterlife, it was somewhat...disturbing. 

The feeling only increased, though she hid it behind her usual patter, when he pulled off the mirrored aviators he’d been wearing. His eyes were red, blood red, but that wasn’t the disturbing part. She’d seen all kinds of eyes come and go in this place: natural ones, full-borged ones, ones with funny shapes rather than irises. But she’d never seen a pair of eyes that were quite so  _ hungry _ as the ones looking back at her as he downed the drink he and the bull toasted with and tapped his glass for another. Not hungry for food or drink or sex or eds, just  _ hungry _ . Even when he looked at his friend, laughed with him, it didn’t go away. It was merely painted over, momentarily.

When Dex’s man came to get them, ‘Jackie’ snapped up and all but leapt out of his chair, but the other one - this V - stayed where he was, sipping at his drink. Even when his friend leaned into his eyeline to hurry him along. Then Oleg repeated himself, the anger bubbling away beneath the russian accent. 

“Dex is waiting.” The words brooked no argument. 

Spinning on his stool, the shorter man looked into the glare being sent his way and didn’t so much as blink. “And he’ll keep waiting until I’ve finished this.” 

The words were crisp, stated as plainly as though it was a simple fact of nature, as inarguable a truth than the sky being blue. And V kept staring into the bodyguard’s eyes as he put the glass to his lips and took another sip. Then, with a smirk as sharp as cut glass, he tipped the glass back and sent the whole thing down the hatch, to a slightly worried chuckle from his choom.

As Claire watched them walk off with Oleg, she shook her head. She could’ve just as easily seen the man smashing the glass on the bar and opening the bodyguard’s throat. Everything about him had seemed like a snake, coiled and ready to strike. 

She’d seen a lot of new bloods walk into the Afterlife, a lot of killers too. But that guy? He was one of the few she’d seen that you could look at and  _ know _ they were gonna be the type to end up with their name on a drink. The type that could become a legend in NC. The type that’d go down in history trying to burn the whole city to the ground. 


	2. Chatting with Chrome-junkies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A first look inside our trio of Vs' heads as they pow-wow with Maelstrom.

**_The Street Kid_ **

The elevator door opened and V keeps her face still, for all she wanted to grimace in disgust. She always did when it came to Maelstrom. She liked chrome, just like anyone. She had Kirsoshi optics instead of ‘ganic eyes, she had a netrunner deck nestled nicely in her skull sponge, and had a ballistic grip weaved into the skin of her right hand. Hell, she even had plans to go further once she got the eds. But these borg-fuckers, as Jackie had called them and from now on she would to? They took it too far. 

She looks into the mutilated face of the ganger that meets them, a face that's been torn apart and rebuilt with chrome. A face that no longer has any eyes at all, just a quad optical rig. A shudder runs through her, but she hides it. No fear, not in front of them, not in front of anyone. It’s why she sits down on the couch when asked, why she persuades Jackie to do the same. No friendliness either though, just all biz, even when it evidently pisses off the metalhead called Dum-Dum when she says no to a hit of Black Lace. 

The Flathead, though, piques her interest. A techbug at heart, she can’t hold back from devouring the combat-bot with her eyes, listening interestedly as Dum Dum goes over its schematics and demonstrates it, even chatting shop with him about its new control drivers. If he wasn’t a borged out piece of scop in the closest thing the world had to a death cult, he mighta been a decent guy. But he was, so he wasn’t. A fact he confirms when he steps back and lets his boss barge in snarling like a scrapyard mutt. 

She doesn’t flinch when he storms up, doesn’t so much as blink when he pulls his iron. She probably should - it’s not as if she’s got subdermal plating or anything, just the microplating in her edgerunner and exojacks - but she doesn’t. That isn’t how the game is played. She lets him growl and bark like the mad dog he is. Lets him makes his big show of what a brickhouse badass he thinks he is. And then when he makes it clear he wants to break faith and demand more money, she simply hands him the Militech cred chip. 

The one with the daemon on it. 

Stout musta really thought she was a gonk, that she wouldn’t check the thing. It was a nice little vector too, she had to admit. She’d even made a copy. You never knew when a little piece of code like that’d be helpful. 

As Royce crows to his buddies about the haul and then hands off the cred-chip, she glances at Jackie. He knows what’s about to happen because she told him. When the lights shatter and the power surges as the daemon does it work, they’re both diving behind the couches, drawing their own iron. Even as Royce screams at his men and those connected to the net die in agony with flames erupting from whatever holes in their head they have left, they’re back up with guns barking back. 

Her face is still as she plugs Dum-Dum in the skull and watches him fall. 

Fuck but she hates these chromedomes. 

* * *

**_The Nomad_ **

V’s father had always taught him one thing, growing up. Despite all that had happened between them the last few years, it was something that he still held onto. It had guided him all his life, from when he was a kid running around and taking potshots at cans with the other using Trin’s BB gun, to when he was getting into races in his old beater, to now, where he was sitting in a rotting food manufacturers, talking to a cadre of borged-out psychopaths. It had been a necessary piece of advice for a kid who had hit a growth spurt early and had always been the biggest of the group of children and who’d filled out to still be the biggest guy in the _clan_ by the time he was twenty. 

_“Kid, you’re big and you’re only gonna get bigger. So always actually BE the bigger man.”_

He hadn’t always held to it, but he tried. 

It seemed that Royce’s father had told him no such thing. Nah, he was the typical big guy who thought a quirk of genetics let him do what he wanted. Let him hurt who he wanted. Let him _kill_ who he wanted. The classic bully. V’s dark eyes narrowed as the psycho stormed up, waving his piece around, incensed by the mere mention of the guy he had toppled’s name. He would have smiled, it was so schoolyard and pathetic, but he wasn’t in a smiling mood. He was busy remembering what his _mother_ had always told him. The words she’d drilled into his head during shooting lessons and driving lessons and boxing lessons. The words that were the closest the Bakkers used to have to a creed. 

_“Stand strong. Stand tall. Never back down.”_

Now _that_ he had always held to. 

Glaring up into the blood-red glowing lamps Royce had instead of a face, V kept his answer firm and direct, even as the gang boss levelled his pistol at him. “You can’t expect us to pay twice for something we already bought.” 

Royce sneered, grinding his pistol barrel into V’s forehead. He didn’t so much as grimace, though mentally he made a note to grab some subdermals off of Vik with some of the eddies he got from his share of the heist. “And who are you to say what can and can’t be?”

V never looked away, simply rising to his feet slowly and smoothly, meeting the Maelstromer’s ‘eyes’ on an equal level. The red pistol in the gangoon’s fist was an Arasaka Kenshin. Like any railgun, it’d be at least a full second at least between trigger-pull and the round firing. A second would be all he would need. Beside him, he felt more than saw Jackie stir, ready himself. His choom always had his back. It made him want to smile again. But instead he kept his glare strong and steady as he answered. 

“I am the guy that’s gonna take that pistol off you, unless you get it out of my face.” 

Royce’s answer wasn’t the one V wanted, but it was the one he needed. A harsh, grating, bray of a laugh, then turning away to joke to his cronies about the size of balls. It gave him his opening. First, a jerk of the head to get his skull-sponge out of the firing line, then his hand was at his right hip. The machete slid smooth from the leather of its sheath then turned into a blur of silver and red in the factory’s dim light. 

Royce was screaming - more from surprise than pain, V knew, considering the painkilling implants every Maelstromer crammed themselves with - before his hand hit the ground, still clutching the pistol. And the rest of the chromedomes were still standing slackjawed as he and Jackie drew and opened up on them. 

It had been going so smoothly until Royce had started throwing his weight around. 

His dad should have taught him better. 

* * *

**_The Corpo_ **

V smiled. And not just because of the Black Lace now running through his system, heightening every sense and caressing a couple of different places in his skull-sponge. These Maelstromers, bunch of chromed-out psychos with barely a braincell to spark between ‘em. It was just a sign of how much of a city of opportunity NC was, that they had anything resembling a gang, income, and territory. Given a ‘saka tac-squad, he could probably have wiped them out over the course of a week and still have time for a lazy afternoon. 

But he didn’t have a tac-squad. And so to business. 

He was profoundly disappointed when the boss-man bulled his way in and started showing his fangs, demanding payment _again_ . It was just so _dumb_. Shit like this was how you ended up with a bad rep. And without rep? You were nobody. Nobody’d work with you. And despite what some pricks who misread the classics thought, fear wasn’t the way you kept people in line. A gangoon starts breaking contracts, doing whatever the fuck they want, attacking anyone they wanted, and sooner or later, they got put down like the mad dog they are. 

This Black Lace was good stuff. The feeling running through this system when he and Jack sprang up, of having his gun barrel against Royce’s jugular, was superb. Every nerve was tingling. Every bit of him was screaming to pull the trigger and paint the walls. But then he remembered Stout. He knew the corpo agent playbook cover to cover, from long personal experience. Rule No.9? _Never hand over creds without an angle_. So instead of doing what the s-keef wanted and redecorating with whatever was left inside of Royce’s sorry excuse for a head, he handed over the cred-chip. On a hunch.

The screams of the chrome-suckers as the vector went to work was music to his ears. 

What followed was just what he needed after a day spent in car-rides, meetings, and negotiations. Shotgun blasting and Jackster at his back like always, they tore their way through All-Foods, ripping out Maelstrom’s guts in the process. And he got to redecorate with Royce in the end anyway, blasting the psycho’s skull-servos across the room with both barrels as he lay twitching and burnt out in his little exo-suit. One combat-bot secured, a few dozen borg-fuckers dead, and not one eddie of his own money spent. Bliss. 

Walking out of the factory, his best choom at his side and a tune whistling on his lips, he wasn’t at all surprised when Militech trucks screeched up and out stepped Stout. The sight of her, all ice and ivory, made him grin. He’d known the type a _long_ time. All the pressures of a corpo-fixer’s life needing one hell of a release valve. It’d been him, not so long ago, despite Arasaka’s best neuroblockers. So when she floated the idea of working together a bit more, he gave the answer he knew they both understood. He’d be waiting by the phone for that call. 

After a bit of back and forth with Jackster, he stowed the Flathead in his trunk and got in his Hela, still grinning to himself as he gunned it towards where the Afterlife awaited. 

Fuck but sometimes he loved his job.


	3. Second Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our three Vs get assessed by outside eyes following the Konpeki Heist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it sounds a bit weird to have second impressions, but let's be honest, V changes somewhat after Konpeki and our three souls are no different. Hope you enjoy it all!

**_The Street Kid_ **

Her lecture on what The Mox was really for - which apparently wasn’t what it had been founded to fucking  _ do _ \- complete, Suzie stormed off. Judy’s already black mood wasn’t helped by who walked in after her. Ordinarily an admittedly pretty girl walking in wearing a pair of denim cut-offs cut off  _ that _ high, the rest of her legs poured into shin-high boots, along with a white crop top and a blue and purple pozer-jack, would have lifted any disappointment and erased any anger she was feeling. But not this girl. 

Not  _ V _ . 

She’d already told this gonk of a merc, told her that she didn’t know where Evelyn was. And yet here she was. Wanting her to betray a friend. Wanting her to betray  _ Ev _ . And all just so she could have her vengeance for a job  _ she _ fucked up. The thought made her blood boil so she turned away, away from her and the whole fucked up sitch. Didn’t work though, V stepped back into the side of her eyeline, much as she tried to ignore her and focus on the new virtu she had to tune. 

“You just don’t give up, do you?” she growled, flicking a glance up to meet the purple eyes that this time weren’t hidden behind shades. Then she stretched, deliberately appearing not to care, before she got back to work. The emotion tuners still weren’t right. “Got nothing more to say to each other. Thought I made it clear.” Another glance and this time she sneered the words out. “Or was I just too subtle for you?”

She expected the merc to get in her face. Hell, a bit of her  _ wanted her to. _ All the stuff roiling away inside her, a bit of a faceoff was just what she needed. But she didn’t. Instead all V did was sigh, before leaning one hand against her desk. “Judy, please. I  _ need _ to find Evelyn. It’s important.”

“Why?” came the obvious question, before her anger carried it further. “So you can blame her? Make her a scapegoat for your trainwreck of a heist?” 

V’s answer was a minute shake of the head. “Need to find out who she was working for. Where I can find  _ them _ .”

Judy sat back in her chair. It took her a second to actually work through what the merc had said. She’d expected threats, demands for vengeance. Not curiosity. “That’s it?”

V nodded this time. “That’s it, Judy. You don’t need to worry - I won’t lay a hand on her. Wouldn’t make sense. Evelyn’s safe from me. All I need is information.” 

There was a long moment of silence in the workshop as Judy considered what the solo had said. The anger that’d been building up inside her ever since Konpeki lit up the news feeds and Evelyn disappeared didn’t exactly fade, but at the very least it stopped churning. She dealt with other people’s emotions every day as part of her gig, best as she could tell there wasn’t a lie in those words. V was genuine. And it wasn’t just that. Looking at her with fresh eyes, she saw something. 

Beneath the purple eyes and the doubtless high-quality optics, V looked tired. Not in the simple, physical way, but in a deeper way. Before, that night at the club, when she’d been talking with Evey, the merc had been almost brimming with energy. Now that energy had been knocked out of her by whatever had happened with Konpeki and the heist. That wasn’t to say she looked broken, oh no. Judy could see the  _ drive  _ was still there. Tired or not, nothing was getting in this chick’s way. 

Well, ‘long as she helped her anyway. 

“Fine.” the word was more directed at herself than the merc. “All right.Evelyn’s a doll, used to work at Clouds. Cig case on my table’s got the address. Take it and once you find Evelyn, give it to her.”

She watched as the merc rounded the table, picked up Evey’s cigarettes and looked at the card inside it. As she did so, Judy noticed a bit of fire kindle behind those purple eyes, a bit of that energy she’d first noticed that night her and Eveylyn had planned the Konpeki heist return to the merc’s frame. She could understand it well enough: now the edgerunner had a lead in her hunt, now she had a  _ target _ . She was only glad it wasn’t Ev. Not in that way, anyway.

Closing the case with a distinct  _ click _ and putting it into her pozer-jack’s inside pocket, V looked up and met her gaze. “Thank you, Judy.” 

Judy simply nodded, but as V made to leave the churning in her guts made her speak up again. “V...if you find her, let me know?” 

The silence only lasted a heartbeat, the two of them meeting each other’s eyes. Then V nodded. “You got it, Judy. Soon as I know something.”

She couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from twitching upwards in relief. “Thanks.” Then the lameness of that struck her. V was doing something for her she didn’t need to do and doing it for no charge. Taking a breath, she poured into the next three words all the sincerity she could. “Thank you, V.”

With that, V turned again and headed for the door, whilst she went back to her work. Not without one final glance at the merc however. Now that her anger had stopped churning around her system, she allowed herself a less angry look at the merc. Those cut-offs really were cut off high. And what they teased looked...not bad at all. If merc-work didn’t pan out, she could make a killing in BDs. 

Filing that thought away, Judy got back to work. The emotions still weren’t sitting right.

* * *

**_The Nomad_ **

Panam cursed for the fiftieth time as she rooted around in the guts of the car she’d lifted from a driveway in Rancho Coronado. Fuck Nash. Fuck Rogue. Fuck Night City. Fuck this car. Fuck this whole goddamn world. But most especially  _ fuck Nash _ . That Raffen asshole had left her high and dry, taken the last thing of worth she had left in this world. She had barely gotten out of the ambush he’d sprung with her life and now she had no car, no cargo, and no way to get back into the life she’d chosen for herself ever since she had left the clan. If she didn’t get this hunk of junk working properly, if she didn’t rejig a couple of circuits and then decouple the alarm then-

A voice interrupted her darkening thoughts. One she remembered from a call she’d only been paying half-attention to. “Panam Palmer?”

Looking up from under the hood, Panam’s eyes widened for a sec as she realised who it was. The nomad from the Afterlife, the one she had spotted before that meeting with that traitorous shitheel, Nash. He looked...different...from when she had seen him that night, sitting and drinking with his choom. In the space of a few beats of her heart, she sized him up again.

There was the obvious stuff, of course. Before he’d been dressed in a vest and cargo pants, now he was wearing a denim biker jacket and pair of leather-faced straightcuts, along with the same white tank she’d seen before. All he needed was the hat and some cowboy boots instead of his combats and he’d be giving Cassidy a run for his money. She supposed the look - topped off with some dark green aviators - worked for him, but it was a shame he’d covered up his tattoos, ‘cept for what little of the central design over his chest peaked out from under the tanktop. 

Then there was his gear. The revolver, a big and heavy Burya, was the same but before he’d been carrying a machete on the opposite hip. Now he had a goddamn  _ sword _ hanging from his belt. Not one of those new-age things Tygers and Arasaka soldiers swung around, from the looks of it was an authentic Japanese katana from at least the last century. Where on earth he’d found that piece she did not know. Nor did she particularly care. Definitely made a statement though. 

And finally there were the smaller things, the things that made her eyes narrow. His hair was still in its traditional mohawk, but the gold was gone from it. It’d been weeks since she had laid eyes on him in the Afterlife, so it could’ve just grown out. But why’d he let it? Most people, once they’d gone to the effort, kept it up. And there was something in the way he looked and the way he stood - arms crossed, weight on one leg - that told her something. It was something that she recognised from every time she looked in the mirror. Someone trying to keep going despite a heavy weight out of defiance rather than outright strength. 

“So you’re V.” she said, before looking back inside the guts of the beater. “Where’s my car?” 

“Don’t have it, but I know where it is.” the solo answered. “Rogue figured I could use that to get your help with an op I’m running.” 

The sound that came out of Panam’s mouth was half a scoff and half a growl. “I might’ve guessed.” Typical Rogue, that diamond-hard bitc-

“But that’s bullshit.” the words made her look back up from the engine, look into V’s sun-bronzed face, which was set in earnest lines. “Honest trade, nomad to nomad: I help you get your wheels and your cargo back, you help me with a job that needs doing, sound fair?”

It  _ did _ sound fair, which is why Panam didn’t trust it. Not after Nash. There had to be an angle. “The job?”

“Hitting a Kang Tao transport.” he answered with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer to the kneecap.

Her hands stilled from her tinkering. There it was. Disbelief wrote itself plainly across her face as she looked back up out of the shadows of the hood. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

“Probably,” V smiled, showing off teeth that were very white amidst his black beard and bronze skin before his face grew serious again. “but I don’t have a lot of options. AV’s route’ll take it out over Jackson Plains. That should help us if we can find the right spot.”

“Yeah, I doubt it.” she grumbled darkly, turning back to the engine. She almost had it. 

“Target’s a passenger on board, need to talk with him, Panam.” V’s voice had shifted slightly. The tiniest hint of...not desperation...but definitely something akin to exigency. He did very obviously  _ need _ to get this Kang Tao corporat, whoever he was.

Just like she needed her Thorton. “...Fuck.”

The shadows got a bit darker as he stepped closer and his shadow blocked out more of the light. “Hey, in return you get your ride back.” the need was gone from his voice now, replaced by an almost coaxing lightness as he placed a hand on the side of the open engine bay. “We both know what that means. We good?”

Panam looked from that hand to the engine itself, thoughts and feelings tussling inside her as she moved towards the final tweaks that’d make this bucket hers more securely. This was a hell of a risk and she wasn’t just thinking about Kang Tao. “...I dunno. I…” Her words faltered at the same time her fingers did. The car’s alarm, a blaring, deafening thing screamed out in protest. She cursed, hands flying to where the siren lay while V’s snapped back as if he’d been scalded. A couple of quick wrenches and she tore the thing free, tossing it away with a snarl as its screaming died to a whine and finally silence. 

Slamming the hood down, she turned to face the solo, folding her arms across her chest. “All right, deal.” she said, matching his gaze despite the fact he was half a head taller than her. “But if you want your thing done, we’ll need to get my Thorton back first.” 

“That ain’t a problem.” V shrugged, hooking a thumb into one of the beltloops of his straightcuts at his left hip, nestling it against both his belt and one of the anchor points for the chain harness holding his sword on running through it.

“So where is it?” she asked, refusing to sound desperate and instead going for demanding.

“Rocky Ridge,” V supplied equally. “goods’re there too.”

Putting the Raffen’s plan together in a heartbeat, Panam’s scowl deepened as the fury smouldering inside her chest roared back to life and she ground out her words through gritted teeth. “Nash, you dirt-eating bastard. I will strangle you.” 

“Nash a choom of yours, he hang you out to dry?” V asked, leaning back onto his right heel again. 

“Do not call him that.” her words were a whipcrack, eyes snapping to meet his again. 

“Fine.” V held up the hand he had free in surrender. “Partner.”

“Former, if  _ ever _ .” she spat. “Shiv tricked me. He straight nipped my truck and the merch. Probably now aims to sell it off in Rocky Ridge.” A vicious hunter’s grin pricked up the corners of her lips. “Is he ever going to be fucking disappointed.”

“You saddled up with a Raffen?” V’s face had contorted into incredulity. At least it wasn’t disgust.

“Not like I knew!” she hurled the words away, knowing them to be pathetic for all their truth.

“Still though?” the still-incredulous smirk creasing the now-healed scar on his cheek only stoked her anger higher

“Take it up with the Queen Bitch herself, she put us together.” she snapped, before mentally cursing Rogue to several painful and undignified deaths all over again.

Again, V’s free hand rose in surrender. “Come on, Rocky Ridge’s waiting.”

With that pronouncement, all her anger snuffed out as the weight of everything pressed down on it. What she had to do, what she needed to do it, everything. Now one of her own hands rose, the other rubbing at her eyes. “Eh, hang on...I should think this through.” pushing off the car she paced on the spot. Her mind was rarely at peace with itself, but now it was a full-on warzone. The desire for revenge grappled with not wanting to deal with having to go back for help, fear of looking weak cold-cocking her with the fact that right now she  _ was,  _ knowing that she needed V’s backup trying to overcome the burning left behind by Nash’s treason. All of it whirling into one hell of a mess. Another glance at him quashed it. Had to focus on the now, focus on the task at hand. “...fuck. Yes.” she nodded, more to herself than him, before she started thinking of next steps clearly. “We’ll need backup. We have one brief stop to make on the way.”

At that, V nodded, before he hooked a thumb towards the road. “Mine or..” that little smirk came back, playful now. “’yours’?”

Panam looked over her shoulder at the heap behind her. Having just acquired it, she was loath to part with the car, beat-up pile of rust and plastic that it was. But then she followed the hooked thumb towards the road and her eyes widened in both surprise and no small part of naked desire. 

Sitting on the curbside, black bodywork glinting through the dust of a good few day’s driving, was another Thorton. Not her Thorn, instead a Little Mule. Despite the cutesy nickname saddled on it by every nomad west of the Colorado, she knew it to be a tough all-wheeler and this one had been modified to nomad specs. Even at a distance she could make out the armor plates and reinforcements, the cameras for CrystalDome windscreen and windows. And if V really was a nomad its engine definitely wouldn’t be floor-model. If she was riding into a fight - and she was - then it was the next best thing to her own ride.

“Yours.” she said, trying to keep both the surprise and relief from her voice and mostly succeeding. “Definitely yours.” Tearing her eyes away from it, she held up a hand again. Something she needed to do. “But give me a sec, need to make a call, talk to the client, then get a few things out of my trunk.”

V nodded, tone easy and understanding. “I’ll be waiting. Whenever you’re ready.”

As she dug her phone out of her jacket and punched in Boz’s number, she watched him go. The way he walked was the same, the same controlled confidence that’d first marked him out to her as a nomad back in the Afterlife. But as he drew near his ride and opened the door, she noticed just the smallest bit of a swagger before he jumped up into the open door like a cowboy swinging up into the saddle. 

The tiniest smile kinked her lips, before Boz’s voice on the other end snapped her out of it. Fuck but she hoped this new partner of hers was more trustworthy. He damn well better be. 

* * *

**_The Corpo_ **

Rogue knew people called her ‘The Queen of the Afterlife’. It was nonsense, but useful nonsense. So long as everyone knew that this place was  _ hers _ and that what she said went both within and beyond, she couldn’t give a shit what they called her. She knew every inch of her club, every table and chair, every edgerunner or fixer that walked through its doors. So when, over both the screeching chords of Johnny’s  _ Ballad of Buck Ravers _ and Panam Palmer’s ranting, she started hearing a distinct chorus of muttering from the other solos in the club, she was intrigued. That curiosity became outright attention when, following Palmer’s tantrum culminating in her storming off to pout and clearing her view of her place, she saw what was causing it.

A ghost had walked into the Afterlife. 

Out of the shitshow that had been the Konpeki Heist, only one of the team had walked away. And nobody had heard of him even when people asked specifically, so most had given V up for dead too, tracked down and killed by ‘saka ninjas like Dexter DeShawn. But here he was, all but strutting across the floor of her club, wearing a blood red coat cut in vintage-style. She recognised the colors and the cut immediately: Kotetsu No Ryu, the Steel Dragons. A trophy from Yorinobu’s pad? Bold. Very bold. Just as bold as strutting up to Weyland like he should get out of the way for him. 

“Rogue, we need to talk.” the voice was cold, the words spoken right through Weyland’s skull as if he wasn’t ther. 

“Let him through.” she commanded. And the pup was let through, sliding down onto the couch beside her. 

“I didn’t say you could sit down.” the tone she used had shrivelled pricks belonging to men far more important than a merc whose biggest score had been a failure. All the same it fractured against the silvered lenses of his aviators. 

“No, you didn’t.” V answered, the gaze behind the specs never shifting. “But it’d be impolite to say I couldn’t. Anders Hellman, ‘saka’s hotshot engineer, I need him.” 

The urge to smack this kid down was strong, but there was just something about him that stopped her. So she keyed up her contacts and the call went out. “Anders Hellman, pinpoint him for me?”

The solo’s lips twitched. “Obliged.”

Now she had to put it down. “Jumping too soon. First, my help’s got a price. Second and third - Dexter DeShawn, Jackie Welles, T-Bug.” Only on the second name did she see a response, the brows knitting momentarily over the silver shades. It was enough. “Multiple bells ringing, V. Left a lot of bodies behind. Death walks in your wake. Chalk that up to bad luck?”

For a long moment the merc was still. She thought she had him as he leant forward, eyes flicking off over her left shoulder. But then he spoke, crimson eyes snapping back to her. And when he spoke there was a curl to his lip she recognised. Something she had never expected to see again. 

“You wanna go through obits, really?” he sneered, that same goddamn sneer. “Fine, Johnny Silverhand, zeroed right in front of you inside ‘saka Tower, as I recall. Got more, if you want. Or we could just talk biz.” 

She hid it, best as she could. The surprise. And she could hide it damn well. You didn’t get to where she was by letting things slip through your face. But even as she talked biz and arranged plans and took payment, there was a cold shard of ice working through her gut and up her spine. She’d seen the curl of that lip before, the look in those crimson eyes. A look that didn’t simply want to  _ control  _ Night City, but wanted to burn it to the ground. And not to lord it over the ashes, but simply because the mind behind it wanted to smell the smoke. 

It was a look she never thought she’d see again. A look she though she’d last seen half a century ago. And yet there was just something about this punk that made her think she was looking into the past. And it wasn’t the black hair, the beard, the pale skin, or the way he acted like he owned whatever place he walked into. It was those eyes. The originals hadn’t been red, but they were still the same. 

And so as V walked off, she turned to Nix and gave him a simple job. To find out as much as possible about this ‘V’. Who he was, who his parents were, what he’d done and what he hoped to do. Every last single fucking thing about him. Because she couldn’t help but shake the feeling.

That a ghost had just walked into the Afterlife.

* * *

A/N: Hope you all enjoyed that. Apologies for the amount of dialogue, but sometimes these things are necessary. In recompense, I hope you enjoy this, a first proper look at our three souls! Here they are:

See you all soon!


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